In the past few weeks or few days, it seems like my social media has been flooded with just negative and depressing news. I think mostly about politics. Do you feel the same? It's hard to get away from it.

Aside from everything going on politically in our world today, we can all agree that life is not always perfect. No matter how much money you make, how many friends you have or how great your job is, we all go through ups and downs . Life is life. We must deal with hardships to be stronger, to recognize our strengths and to appreciate the beauty in life. But it's not always easy to push through difficult times.

It's been a while since I've had the chance to post a new blog entry. I've had a busy few months doing some traveling, visiting family and focusing on other areas of The English Student for the next year. I'm very excited to have new products and downloads soon. I know so many of you have been waiting patiently for something new, so thank you all for sticking around as I get myself settled!

Speaking of traveling, the holiday is one of the most popular travel times. A lot of people take this time to visit family and friends or go on vacation. I thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about some phrasal verbs related to travels, especially if you'll be going away somewhere. If you need a review, a phrasal verb is a verb + a preposition. Phrasal verbs are really important in the English language because a single verb could change meaning when a preposition is added to it.

If you haven't already met Mr and Mrs Robinson on The English Student Instagram page, here they are! Obviously ready to get away. Take a look at their travel story below.

Yesterday we talked about phobias and the meaning of the word, acrophobia. If you missed it, you can find it right here. As promised, I wanted to present a few other words illustrating other phobias. Some are strange and some might be common. But these are pretty interesting!

Ablutophobia - fear of bathingAutophobia- fear of being alone or of one’s selfCacophobia- fear of uglinessCynophobia - fear of dogsHeliophobia- fear of sunlight)Lalophobia- fear of speakingLeaukophobia - fear of the color white

Monophobia- abnormal fear of being aloneOdontophobia- fear of teethPaedophobia- fear of childrenPhilophobia - fear of loveSophophobia- fear of learningSiderophobia- fear of starsTriskaidekaphobia- fear of the number 13

Artist Mickey Bach also has a lot of wonderful and funny drawings showing some different phobias. Take a look at them below. His collection of Word a Day was popular in the 1940s. You can see a collection of them on this website.

If you've been following my Instagram or my blog posting from last time, you probably remember that I was heading to Oregon and also Olympic National Park. Our trip was beautiful, especially being surrounded by so much greenery. The weather, however, was another story - cold and windy. It was definitely not beach weather.

Summer has finally arrived! I hope you're all enjoying it so far! Some of you may live in a place where it's warm all year round, so summers may not seem like a big deal to you. But to those living in a place like Seattle, we always lack vitamin D. Even spring time could be rainy, gloomy, and windy. So summer is kind of a big deal here! To celebrate the nice weather, we'll be heading off to a beach in Oregon tomorrow. The weather there will be a little cooler than it is here, but at least there's no sign of rain! We'll also be driving through Olympic National Park which I know will be beautiful. Any of you been there before?

As I was doing some packing yesterday, I started placing everything I'll need on my bed. Right away I felt inspired to draw all these essential things that one may need for the summer time. You may also be thinking about your summer. Did I miss out any other essentials?

If you're following The English Student on Instagram, you may be able to follow our short road trip with our little dog Maggie.

The other night I had a hard time falling asleep so I started watching the show Seinfeld. It was an episode where one of the characters, George couldn't keep a secret. He kept trying hard to maintain an expressionless face so that Jerry, his friend wouldn't know he was keeping something from him. Jerry could sense something was going on and says, "so that's your poker face?" George says, "no, that's my regular face!" It was obvious it was not his regular face as he had a poker face. You can see this video on the bottom of this post.